


a heart that sings

by starstrung



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Prosthesis, Sentient Spaceship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 07:07:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6185368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung/pseuds/starstrung
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s possible that Shepard doesn’t give nearly as much thought as she should have to what it means to be brought back from the dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a heart that sings

It’s possible that Shepard doesn’t give nearly as much thought as she should have to what it means to be brought back from the dead.

She hasn’t had time, for one. Since waking up in a Cerberus facility, it’s been about staying alive. In a lot of ways, her new life isn’t all that much different from her old one.

And it might be that she’s not ready to give it much thought. She feels great, and maybe she misses her old scars and the memories of old battles they had with them, but her biotics are as reliable as ever, her team is coming together, and she can feel blood pumping through her veins during a good fight. Most days, that’s enough for her to not want to look any further.

Which is why she was probably overdue on facing reality. In retrospect, it’s mostly Shepard’s fault. She’s taken off her helmet, thinking that they’ve taken care of all their enemies, to let the wind cool off the sweat on her face. Rookie mistake.

That doesn’t stop her from feeling angry as all hell when a Collector sniper hits her with a shot that punches into her collarbone and throws her onto her back, legs thrashing reflexively.

Jack snarls something, maybe out of anger at being caught unawares, or the thrill of having another enemy to kill. There’s a flare of blue biotic energy and Shepard assumes that she takes care of the Collector, since there’s no more gunfire.

Then, Jack is crouching over her, shaved head neatly blocking out the sun.

“You’re loud when you get hit, huh?” she says, delighted.

In response, Shepard says something rude, and probably ill-advised, but Jack just grins wider. Any other time, Shepard would be happy that Jack is showing an emotion other than aggression or outright bloodlust.

Jacob appears in her field of vision. He keeps a wary distance, as if worried that Shepard will take a swing at him. She certainly feels like it, if her entire chest didn’t feel like it’s been blasted into a million pieces.

“Will one of you fucking fucks call the Normandy for pick-up?” she manages.

“Already done,” Jacob says, mildly, and then disappears, leaving Jack to look after her.

“I have to say, Shepard, it doesn’t look pretty,” Jack says, craning her neck to get a better look at Shepard’s collarbone. Shepard bats her away. The resulting wave of pain nearly drives her into unconsciousness, but she manages to keep Jack’s grinning face in focus.

“Fuck. You.”

The Normandy chooses that time to crackle into communications range.

“Wow,” Joker says, and Shepard can hear the familiar hum of the Normandy’s approaching engines “Is that really any way to talk to your brave and noble rescuers?”

-

“Look, Doc,” Shepard says. She stares at the ceiling of the medbay, idly trying to find patterns in the stainless chrome. The painkillers that Chakwas gave her have dulled the pain, but she can still feel every poke and shift.

“Yes, Shepard?” Chakwas says, voice stiff with concentration.

“Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but haven’t you been looking around in there for a while? Can I help you find something?” Shepard asks, can’t help the note of panic that sticks to her voice. One of the smudges on the ceiling looks like a Thresher Maw, she’s decided.

Chakwas straightens up and peers down at Shepard, her gloved hands shiny with blood. She looks as if something has badly surprised her. “Wait here for a moment, would you?” She puts her tools to the side, strips off her gloves, and leaves medbay.

“What,” Shepard says, watching her leave. She lifts her head up, and looks at the ragged wound, then collapses back, vision swimming.

“EDI?”

“Yes, Shepard?” For a Cerberus A.I. that reports each one of their movements directly to the Illusive Man, she’s got one hell of a voice.

“How’s the crew?” Shepard asks, wondering if Jack has decided to hold Engineering hostage in her absence, or if Mordin has let loose a newly concocted virulent disease.

“All two hundred-sixty-three of the crew aboard this vessel show strong vital signs, and little to no indicators of stress in their behavior, Shepard.”

“Great, EDI,” Shepard says, wondering how she knows that, and not wanting to ask. “Thanks for the update.”

The medbay doors open, bringing Chakwas and Miranda Lawson.

“Oh, well done, Shepard. Look what a mess you’ve made,” Miranda says, putting on gloves and investigating Shepard’s wound.

“What’s she doing here?” Shepard asks Chakwas, who stands on her other side.

“I’m afraid I’m not as familiar with your new body as Operative Lawson is,” Chakwas says, and Shepard is gratified by how bitter she sounds.

“You’ve practically ruined the collarbone,” Miranda tells her. “Let the Collectors have their target practice on it, did you?”

“It’s my collarbone. I can do whatever the hell I want with it.”

“Most people’s collarbones don’t cost as much as a small space station, Shepard.”

“I don’t care, just fix it,” Shepard says, through gritted teeth. Miranda pulls a twisted shard of something out of her wound that does not look like bone, or bullet. It gleams red and silver.

Miranda sees her looking, and smiles, as if she is not currently holding a piece of what Shepard knows must be her skeleton.

“Electron beam additive manufactured titanium prosthesis, seeded with the purest element zero, implanted with the finest Cerberus cybernetics,” Miranda says, with no small amount of pride.

“Right,” Shepard says.

“I’m hoping you have a spare clavicle in your quarters?” Chakwas asks dryly, and Miranda seems to remember that Shepard is, in fact, direly injured.

“I don’t,” Miranda says. “But we can use the electron beam printers the Normandy’s been using to turn all that mined palladium and iridium into new hull defenses and gun upgrades. All we need is a blueprint.”

“Which I’m guessing you have?” Chakwas asks.

“Of course,” Miranda says, sounding annoyed. She gives Shepard one last disapproving look, and leaves medbay, presumably to print Shepard a new fucking collarbone.

“Have you really not seen anything like this before?” Shepard asks Chakwas.

“I’ve seen plenty of soldiers with skeletal implants. Not quite as many have this much Cerberus tech along with it.”

“Oh, good,” Shepard says, and finds herself feeling faintly nauseous.

“That doesn’t make you any less Commander Shepard,” Chakwas tells her firmly. Shepard cannot find a reply to that.

Miranda comes back, victoriously holding her newly printed collarbone. “Still warm,” she says, and Shepard has to look away, grit her teeth.

Chakwas gives her a sedative, a stronger one this time, and the last thing Shepard sees is Miranda with her hair tied back to keep it out of the way, directing Chakwas where to go in, fingers light against her skin.

-

Shepard wakes up to find a faint red line across her collarbone, and although the skin feels tender and freshly regenerated, she doesn’t feel any other discomfort.

She rolls her shoulder reflexively, and it doesn’t even twinge. A part of her is horrified, the other part is impressed, and she wonders if that’s the part Cerberus — Miranda — put in.

“EDI?” she asks, because Chakwas is nowhere to be seen.

“Yes, Shepard?”

“How’s the crew?” she asks.

“Ninety-eight percent of the crew are asleep. Of the remaining two percent, two crewmembers have previously documented sleep disorders, one is Miranda Lawson, and the other is you.”

Shepard tears off her medical gown and dresses in her clothes, not bothering to do more than shove her feet into her boots, and goes to find Miranda.

“EDI told me you were awake,” Miranda says, opening the door to her office, visibly taking in Shepard’s dishevelled appearance.

Shepard scowls.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Miranda says, leaning back against her desk and watches Shepard. “Well? I expect you have questions.”

She does have questions, but that doesn’t mean that she has to put up with how smug Miranda is being. “Having fun, are you?”

Miranda makes a shrugging motion. “I take pride in my work. And I’m proud of you, Shepard.”

Shepard gives her a strange look, before she remembers that Miranda doesn’t mean it like that. And now Miranda looks even more smug than she did when she first walked in.

She resists pinching the bridge of her nose. A bad habit, one that she picked up from Anderson, but not useful in this situation. “Just. Tell me what you did to me,” Shepard says, impatience turning her voice harsher than it should be.

Miranda’s eyes narrow, and her voice turns sharp. “I think you’ll have to be more specific.”

“All right, fine,” Shepard says. Pleasant. She can be pleasant. “Why don’t you tell me just how much of me is synthetic now?”

This time, Miranda looks satisfied with her question. “About 75% of your skeleton burned up during your re-entry into atmo. That had to be replaced, of course.”

“Of course,” Shepard says.

“Most of your organs and muscles had to be regenerated. The best stem cell technology went into that. You got to keep your liver, though. Well, 80% of your liver.”

“And my brain, what about that?”

Miranda looks at her. “Oh, I see.”

Shepard smiles grimly. “Just figured out why I’m asking you all these questions, did you? It’s not out of scientific fucking curiosity, that’s for sure.”

Miranda’s expression goes cool, like it always does when she thinks Shepard is being unreasonable. “No, somehow I didn’t think it was.”

“So?” Shepard asks her.

“You should thank your Alliance. The helmets that they put on your armor are made of sturdy stuff. Your skull was almost completely intact, and your brain only suffered mild concussive damage. Skin and hair was a lost cause, but—” Miranda pauses to gesture at Shepard’s face. “You wouldn’t know it, would you?”

Shepard lets out a breath. She hasn’t even realized how much this has been weighing on her, the possibility that everything behind her skull is one massive Cerberus implant.

“Is that all?” Miranda asks, head tilting to the side. “I thought you would have more for me.”

“That’s all I wanted to know. Anything past that, I’d rather do without, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I’m always willing to tell you what you need to know. But it wasn’t really answering more questions that I had in mind,” Miranda says, and it’s probably the easy way she says it that catches Shepard off guard.

She doesn’t hide her reaction quickly enough — confusion, surprise, interest — and Miranda probably sees it all flash across Shepard’s face in quick succession, if the way she’s moving towards her is any indication.

“Really? Miranda, do you even like me?” Shepard asks. She feels abruptly like she’s been led to the edge of something, and been asked to jump.

“That’s neither here nor there, is it?” Miranda says, and squeezes a hand around her bicep. It’s possessive, appraising, and Shepard shivers.

“Oh,” she says, and allows herself to be leaned back up against the wall, moving her feet apart so that Miranda can press up against her, one hand at the small of Miranda’s back. When Miranda tips her head up to kiss Shepard, the ends of her hair brush against Shepard’s fingers.

Suddenly, every sensation is too much, detailed beyond recognition, and Shepard closes her eyes against it, which helps, somewhat. She focuses on the brush of Miranda’s lips against hers, hungry and seeking. Miranda takes control of the kiss, and Shepard lets her.

The kiss grows distracted, Miranda’s attention turning to getting the front of Shepard’s pants open, hand sliding into her underwear. Shepard can’t help but gasp against Miranda’s lips.

Miranda builds up to a pace that is relentless, overwhelming. She doesn’t kiss Shepard anymore, tips her head back and watches Shepard’s face, eyes dark, and then Shepard is arching back, pleasure flooding through her with terrifying force. For one long moment, she forgets to breathe.

Miranda puts a hand over the heavy, dragging pulse of her throat, wrist resting against Shepard’s new collarbone, and kisses her again.

-

Shepard puts up a valiant effort to not think about it again. The line across her collarbone fades away completely, doesn’t even itch. But sometimes she’ll be dressing and her hands will slide over her ribs, her sternum, the back of her neck, and she’ll remember the Cerberus tech under her skin, keeping her alive.

It’s fitting that her bones are now made of the same stuff that the Normandy is made of. They were both brought back from the dead together, after all.

She finds it easiest to forget what she is when she’s in armor, because then she doesn’t really have to be human anymore, just a force of nature, just reflexes and instinct, and a job getting done. A galaxy to save, and she’s the only one who can save it. Everything else becomes secondary.

So maybe she deserves it when Kaidan looks at her like he doesn’t recognize who or what she is.

“I don’t want to discuss it,” Shepard tells Garrus, when he tries to bring it up.

“That asshole doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he says, but the way he says it is almost a question, like he’s waiting for Shepard to agree with him.

She waits until he’s done, watches him draw back with hurt, or perhaps disappointment. She still has her armor on. Everything else is secondary.

And then finally, realizing she has nothing to say, he asks to be dismissed, all faultless Turian man-at-arms — not the Garrus she knows at all — and that’s what she regrets the most.

She has to put her armor away eventually though. She talks with Tali, who spends most of the conversation telling her things about the Normandy’s engine, grudging respect in her voice. She doesn’t know about Kaidan yet, although Shepard is sure that Garrus will tell her about it soon enough.

“It’s nothing like the old Normandy, of course,” Tali says, and Shepard finds herself hiding a smile at the protective loyalty she says it with. Her voice is pitched at just the right volume to be overheard by the nearby Cerberus engineers, who are pretending not to eavesdrop. “But she’s a beautiful ship, Shepard,” she concedes, in a much quieter voice.

She checks in with Jack, and finds that the good mood she was in when Shepard was injured has long evaporated, replaced with the coiled viciousness of a snake ready to strike, the hatred of old memories burning in her eyes.

It takes her a long time to get Jack to stop snarling at her, and even then, it feels like they barely make any progress. When she leaves, Jack is an angry ball curled up on her cot, a vice-like grip on her pistol.

By that point, she’s exhausted and starving, so she makes her way to the mess hall. The tables are mostly empty, except a couple crewmembers drinking coffee in comfortable silence, and Miranda and Mordin talking animatedly in the corner.

She heats up her food and sits at an empty table, thoughts still on Jack, so she doesn’t notice right away that Mordin and Miranda are talking about her.

“The Alliance genetically enhances its soldiers all the time, does it not?” Mordin is saying.

“Yes, but there are always fitness trade-offs to consider,” Miranda answers. “She was already an effective soldier, there was no need to tamper with that. Besides, genetic engineering isn’t really how I do things.”

Mordin sounds skeptical. “No genetic modifications at all?”

“Not how others would do it, I agree,” Miranda says, the tone of her voice conveying just how little she thinks of those “others”. “But even though it was harder, I don’t think she would be the same otherwise.”

There is a pause, Mordin perhaps taking a bite of food. “What I find remarkable is how seamless the transition from organic to metallic skeleton is. I have noticed that she exhibits no particular back pain, even though her posture can be quite atrocious at times.”

(Shepard straightens up self-consciously from her slouch.)

“I made sure that every piece of the skeleton was a perfect fit,” Miranda says. “After all that preparation it was a pleasure to put in.”

That’s all she can take, it turns out. Shepard drops her fork, and turns around in her seat. “You do know I’m right here, right?” she says, loudly enough that the crewmembers on the other table look up from their coffee.

Mordin looks sufficiently surprised, but Miranda’s amused expression makes Shepard sure that she was, in fact, acutely aware that Shepard was listening.

“Never mind.” She abandons her food and stands up, walking as quickly as she can back to her quarters, where she kicks off her boots and collapses on the bed, arm slung over her eyes. She tries not to think about anything at all.

It takes only a few minutes for Miranda to follow her there, keying in the access code, and coming in to stand at the foot of her bed.

“This would be a lot easier if you were happy with your new body, Shepard. Does hearing it discussed make you that uncomfortable?” Miranda asks, and although her words are mocking, her tone is soft.

Shepard sits up to kneel in the bed. “It’s not that,” she says, and she pulls Miranda into bed with her. Miranda makes a pleased, surprised noise, hands supporting her weight on Shepard’s shoulders. Shepard lays her back against the mattress and begins to work on Miranda’s clothes.

“You could have told me,” Miranda reproaches her, even as she helps Shepard find the zipper.

“Then you’d look at me like — the way you’re looking at me right now, actually. Like that. Exactly,” Shepard says, looking down at her.

Miranda doesn’t even try to hide her smirk. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t,” Shepard says and kisses her quiet.

And afterwards, Miranda props herself on her forearms, hair a lovely tumbled mess, and recounts the story behind every bone and organ in Shepard’s body until Shepard doesn’t feel quite so much a creature grown in a lab as she does a glorified, exalted thing.

Fortunately, she’s too exhausted to be mortified about it, and so she falls asleep to Miranda’s fingers tracing along her pelvis.

“Even when you were a mass of flesh with tubes sticking out, you never stopped fighting. I could feel it. You wanted to come back,” Miranda is saying in a thoughtful tone, as if to herself.

-

Miranda kicks her awake.

“What. What’s happening.” Shepard comes awake in high alert, thoughts racing. The Collectors must have found them again, their plasma guns ripping through the Normandy’s hull like so much tissue paper, Joker’s voice crackling and breaking over the comms as the ship breaks up around her.

“You’re heavy,” Miranda says.

“Oh,” Shepard says, and lifts the arm she has slung over Miranda. She must have moved in her sleep.

Released, Miranda immediately slides out of bed, beginning to get dressed. “I can’t believe you let me fall asleep here,” she says, angrily.

“What’s the hurry?” Shepard asks, watches the graceful line of her back as she gets dressed.

“I have work to do, Shepard,” Miranda says.

“You have something — there.” Shepard points. “Stuck in your hair. Here, let me.” She reaches out.

Eyes narrowed, Miranda leans towards her, and Shepard puts a hand on her jaw and kisses her, sweet and sloppy, like she knows Miranda hates. “Good morning,” she says.

Miranda pushes hard against her shoulder until Shepard falls back against the sheets. “I hate you,” she says, and she’s not blushing, exactly, but there is a breathless look to her face. Shepard smiles, pleased with herself.

“I have something important I need to talk to you about,” Miranda says as she leaves, fingers combing furiously through her hair. “Find me later.”

“Tell me now,” Shepard says.

Miranda gives Shepard a disgusted look. “I don’t think so,” she says, and leaves.

Shepard lies back, feeling more content than she’s felt since she woke up in that Cerberus facility. “EDI?”

“Yes, Shepard?”

“How’s the crew?”

“Two hundred-fifty-nine members of the crew are awake and are reporting for duty,” EDI reports.

“Let me guess, I’m one of the crewmembers not reporting for duty.” She takes that as a hint, and starts getting ready for the day.

“Yes.” There is a pause, almost imperceptible. “Also, three members of the crew have neglected to set their alarms and are likely to oversleep.”

“You better wake them up, then,” Shepard says.

“Yes, Shepard.”

-

Shepard finds her later, like Miranda asked her to, and Miranda tells her about her sister.

“EDI, tell Joker to set a course to Illium,” Shepard says.

“Yes, Shepard,” EDI replies.

“Wait, I haven’t even finished telling you—” Miranda says.

“You can finish telling me on the way to Illium,” Shepard tells her. She’s never seen Miranda like this — nervous, laid bare. It is the first time she has ever asked Shepard to do something for her.

“You know you can trust me, right?” Shepard says, even though, heart sinking, she thinks she knows the answer.

“Trust you? Do you even trust me?” Miranda asks her.

“Yes?” Shepard says. “Of course I do.” Miranda has watched her back in a fight countless times by now. That’s trust, in her book.

“Even though I work for the Illusive Man? And I report to him? What do you call that, if not betraying your trust?” Miranda asks, eyebrows climbing.

Shepard shrugs. “Doing your job?” she says.

Miranda studies her a moment, like she’s not certain whether Shepard is being serious.

“All right, enough. We’ll be getting to Illium soon and I still need to tell you more about what you’ll be getting into,” Miranda says, and Shepard lets her draw the conversation to safer waters.

-

She takes Garrus with her down to Illium, as an apology for what happened between them after Horizon. He doesn’t say anything, but he lays a hand briefly on her shoulder before grabbing his weapons, and she nods at him gratefully.

On Illium, nothing goes according to plan, which Shepard was already expecting, so that was fine. Miranda has stopped being nervous and has fully moved onto being a live wire ready to spark at a moment’s notice, which is less fine. Shepard would ask her to sit this one out if she thought she’d listen.

She barely stops Miranda from killing Niket, her childhood friend, and for a long moment afterwards, Shepard is worried Miranda is going to try to shoot _her_.

Shepard waits at a distance as Miranda goes to speak with Oriana, trying not to watch, and failing completely. Miranda is smiling, an actual smile, and her expression is almost painful to look at for how desperate it is — for Oriana’s approval, or maybe just to not mess this up, this first conversation that nothing in her plans or her genes could ever have prepared her for.

“How did it go?” Shepard asks Miranda when she joins them again.

Miranda still has that smile on her face, smaller now, but still noticeable. “I think it went well,” she says, and then grips Shepard’s arm. Garrus shuffles his feet and appears to take a sudden interest in the city view. “Thank you, Shepard,” Miranda says, leans up to kiss her.

Before she can react, Miranda is pulling away, eyes avoiding hers, that smile still on her face. She hurries away back to the docks where the Normandy is waiting. Garrus, too, heads back that way, giving Shepard a dangerously amused look as he passes her.

And after a minute or two, aware that she’s drawing looks from random passerby, Shepard follows them, ready to be back on the Normandy and continue her new life.

**Author's Note:**

> My [Tumblr](http://www.shadowsbroker.tumblr.com).


End file.
